"Plague" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the burning house leaping into an ever growing mountain of flame, 'round about it, the ground appeared to be glowing; and, in places, heavy wreaths of yellow smoke ascended from the earth. It seemed as though the world were becoming ignited from that one plague-spot of fire. Faintly, I could see the Swine-things. They appeared quite unharmed. Then the ground seemed to cave in, suddenly, and the house, with its load of foul creatures, disappeared into the depths of the earth, sending a ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... a melancholy sound; "If, as thy cheer and gentle presence teach, Thou courteous art and good, his reign unbound, Release me from this monster, I beseech: Griefs of my own inflict sufficient wound: Nor need I, compassed with such ills about, Other new pain to plague me from without." ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... truth we've found you long ere this In evil days a friend in need! Full many a one stands living here, Whom, at death's door already laid, Your father snatched from fever's rage, When, by his skill, the plague he stayed. You, a young man, we daily saw Go with him to the pest-house then, And many a corpse was carried forth, But you came out alive again. With a charmed life you passed before us, Helped by the Helper watching ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Maria, daughter of Andrea Priuli, and, en secondes noces, to Maria, or Marina, daughter of Bartolommeo Nani. By his two wives he was the father of ten children—five sons and five daughters. Of the five sons, four died of the plague, and the fifth, Jacopo, lived to be the cause, if not the hero, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Hear what followed. First, all the water, that in the lakes and rivers, like that in the wells and vessels, turned to blood. Yet the monarch refused. Then frogs came up and covered all the land. Still he was firm. Then Mosche threw ashes in the air, and a plague attacked the Egyptians. Next, all the cattle, except of the Hebrews, were struck dead. Locusts devoured the green things of the valley. At noon the day was turned into a darkness so thick that lamps would not burn. Finally, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... across, puts her hand on his]. You're a dear, good fellow, George—always have been. I wouldn't plague you only it is absolutely necessary I should know—exactly what you ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... for the most part, and, because we don't see it, we fondly believe that it does not exist—or, if it does exist, that it exists so rarely as scarcely to demand more than a passing condemnation and a sigh. We hear a great deal about the Hidden Plague. We hear of the 80,000 cases of syphilis which are registered every year in the United Kingdom. But we don't know any individual sufferer—or we think we don't; and so, although we take the figure as an acknowledged fact, we nevertheless don't realise it—and in any case, it isn't a nice subject ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... A PLAGUE OF ANTS. A correspondent has suffered for years from annual raids of ants that literally swarm over everything and everywhere. "Last year," says this lady, "they killed ever so many plants, from Pansies to trees. ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... any thing in the world could make her forget her beauty.—And," added she, in a half whisper, "if there is any thing in Fairy lore, I could almost fancy some cruel Fairy had owed her family a grudge, and had given her this gift of excessive beauty on purpose to be the plague and misfortune ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... scruples for the moment. The "From whence came ye?" asked, however, in an Italian idiom, had been answered by "Inghilterra, touching at Lisbon and Gibraltar," all regions beyond distrust, as to the plague, and all happening, at that moment, to give clean bills of health. But the name of the craft herself had been given in a way to puzzle all the proficients in Saxon English that Porto Ferrajo could produce. It had been distinctly enough pronounced by some one on board, and, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... friends. Eric did not shrink now from such conversation as was pursued unchecked in his presence by nearly every one; nay, worse, it had lost its horror, and he was neither afraid nor ashamed to join in it himself. This plague-spot had fretted more deeply than any other into the heart of the school morality, and the least boys seemed the greatest proficients in unbaring without a blush, its ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... of it for me to guess most of the rest while I've been millin' around, getting goin'. Two of the three priests died in a hurry at about the same time, leavin' the other priest the one man in on the know. There was some sort of a plague got 'em; he was scared it was gettin' him, too. So he starts in makin' a long report to the home church, which if he had finished would have been as long as your arm and would of been packed off to Spain and that would of been the last you and me ever ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... fluttering 'twixt hope and fear With trembling hands the lot I see thee draw, 50 Which shall, or sentence thee a victim drear, To that ghaunt Plague which savage knows no law: Or, deep thy dagger in the friendly heart, Whilst each strong passion agitates thy breast, Though oft with Horror back I see thee start, 55 Lo! Hunger drives thee ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... more intense reverence for law, rather than at the increased facilities of locomotion and the cheap production of common things about which our modern scientific school ceases not to boast. And lastly, and perhaps chiefly, we must remember that the 'plague spot of all Greek states,' as one of their own writers has called it, was the terrible insecurity to life and property which resulted from the factions and revolutions which ceased not to trouble Greece at all times, raising a spirit of fanaticism such as religion raised in the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... "You burned out the plague spots, too, with a mighty hot iron, some of them," he added. "I'll never forget your sitting there in that very chair telling me I was a lazy, selfish snob and that, all things considered, I didn't measure up for a nickel with Dick. Jerusalem! ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... thereof was the great plague of 430 B.C. (during the Peloponnesian War), which nearly ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... his mean smock and flung him into the kennel—the fittest bed he ever lay in. Had he remained there it had been well for him; but the fool, accounting himself affronted, came up to demand satisfaction. I gave it him, and plague ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... children, whom you blinded in your rage, at the bidding of an evil woman, and cast them out upon the rocks? Swear to us that you will right our sister, and cast out that wicked woman; and then we will free you from your plague, and drive the whirlwind maidens to the south; but if not, we will put out your eyes, as you put out the eyes of your ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... and of our own likewise, who had formerly assumed the name of ambassadors. Their barbarous usage not only perplexed him there, and detained him long till an order came from court, but gave him much plague all the time he remained in the country, as will appear afterwards from his own journal. They could not easily be persuaded to allow of any difference between him and Mr Edwards, who had been considered by them in the same light with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... patience: What, then, is your art, Sir?—I have been a passive machine for a whole twelvemonth, to be wrought upon at the pleasure of you people of the faculty.—I verily believe, had I not taken such doses of nasty stuff, I had been now a well man—But who the plague would regard physicians, whose art is to cheat us with hopes while they help to destroy us?—And who, not one of you, know any thing but ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... found out new arts and very useful secrets, or who has rendered great service to the State either at home or on the battle-field, his name is written in the book of heroes. They do not bury dead bodies, but burn them, so that a plague may not arise from them, and so that they may be converted into fire, a very noble and powerful thing, which has its coming from the sun and returns to it. And for the above reasons no chance is ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... truth, I have been ashamed to go. I suppose they will give it back when I ask them. And every day I intended going and paying them the money, and every day I shun the street as if a plague was there. I will go some time, but not now. ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it a series of terrible calamities. The returning soldiers brought with them the Asiatic plague, which swept off vast numbers, especially in Italy, where entire cities and districts were depopulated. In the general distress and panic, the superstitious people were led to believe that it was the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... effect of Sunday. I loathe a Sunday when Anna's tied by the leg and the children are away. On Sunday a man has the right to expect his family. Everything here's filthy, the whole place might be down with the plague, and will be, too, if this street's not swept away. I'd like to have a hand on the government ropes." He braced his shoulders. "Now ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... and pleasure sendeth vpon men in the sight of the world, and likewise of the plagues that befell his children and others aforesaide. First when we were made bondmen, being the second day of May 1584. the king had 300. captiues, and before the moneth was expired, there died of them of the plague 150. [Sidenote: The king lost 150. camels taken by the wilde Moores.] And whereas they were 26. men of our company, of whom two were hanged, and one died the same day that wee were made bondslaues: that present moneth there died nine more of our company ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... soon as we reached them, they gathered round to talk. An old herdsman, who was clearly the patriarch of this Arcadia, asked us many questions in a slow deliberate voice. We told him who we were, and tried to interest him in the cattle-plague, which he appeared to regard as an evil very unreal and far away—like the murrain upon Pharaoh's herds which one reads about in Exodus. But he was courteous and polite, doing the honours of his pasture with simplicity and ease. He took us to his chalet and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... has been no check to petty abuse of power, selfishness, which always comes out in some form of injustice or wrong, or similar vexations. Nay, what with the disproportionate growth of vulgar wealth, this element has rapidly increased, and it would really seem as if the plague must spread ad infinitum, unless some means can be found to invogliare and inspire the offenders with a sense of their sins, and move them to reform. And it is more than probable that if all who are at heart sincerely willing to reform their morals ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "A plague on those musty old lubbers, Who tell us to fast and to think, And patient fall in with life's rubbers, With nothing ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that at length I have taken up my pen to comply with their wishes. My memory, although I may occasionally become slightly mixed, is still excellent, and having been born in the first year of the present century I consequently can remember both the Plague and Fire of London. The latter is memorable to me as having been the cause of my introduction to Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN, an architect of some note, and an intimate friend of Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS, and the late ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... down we hurried. The children all looked happy, and we were merry. But there was one cross fellow among the servants, and didn't we plague him! and didn't we get fun out of him! When he was bringing up dishes, we lay in wait for him at every corner, and sprang upon him from the floor, and from over the banisters, and down from the cornices. He started and stumbled and blundered ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... was so rapid that many left the town and took lodgings in the villages and farms. Mr. Maumbry's house was close to the most infected street, and he himself was occupied morn, noon, and night in endeavours to stamp out the plague and in alleviating the sufferings of the victims. So, as a matter of ordinary precaution, he decided to isolate his wife somewhere away ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Carnival of Perth The Crown of St. Stephen George the Triller Sir Thomas More's Daughter Under Ivan the Terrible Fort St. Elmo The Voluntary Convict The Housewives of Lowenburg Fathers and Sons The Soldiers in the Snow Gunpowder Perils Heroes of the Plague The ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the plague that passed, taking with it the breath of the unlucky and the unfit: and in the hut on Lonesome three were dead—a gaunt mountaineer, a gaunt daughter, and a gaunt son. Later, the mother, too, "jes' kind o' got tired," as little ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... Tsch.) to the large, loathsome, spinous rat (Echinomys leptosoma, Wagn.) swarm over all the Montanas, and love to approximate to the dwellings of man. These animals destroy the gathered harvest, and even in these remote regions they become a plague. It is a striking fact, that certain animals are almost inseparable from man. They keep with him, or follow him wherever he settles. The mouse genus is one of these. On the coast, mice are not the same as on the mountains, and in ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... Athenais de Montespan was to hear it of herself one day. Meantime, while La Valliere's heart is breaking, the model of a finished hero is yawning; as, on such paltry occasions, a finished hero should. LET her heart break: a plague upon her tears and repentance; what right has she to repent? Away with her to her convent. She goes, and the finished hero never sheds a tear. What a noble pitch of stoicism to have reached! Our Louis was so great, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with a wrathful look; "nay, a legion of evil spirits possess me! A plague on that fellow Biarne: he has poisoned the ears of Freydissa with lies about that girl Astrid, to whom I have never whispered a sweet word ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... want to go with you. You want me no more. I can't afford to give you boats.... Come, don't plague me any more with your toy," she said, pushing it away, and then in a moment of convulsive passion she threw the boat across the room. It struck the opposite wall, its mast was broken, and the sails and cords ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... saw whole cities, that in flood or fire, Or famine or the plague, gave up their breath; Whole armies whom a day beheld expire, Swept by ten thousands to ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Bonaparte, however, delivered Portugal from this plague; but what did it obtain in return?—another grenadier Ambassador, less brutal but more cunning, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... will not. You will hear of it from themselves;" that is, probably, by their mutual recriminations. Such indulgent envelopment of good and bad alike in a common mantle of commendation is far from unexampled; but it rarely fails to return to plague its authors, as has been seen in instances more recent than that of Rodney. He clearly had told Sandwich the same in private letters, for the First Lord writes him, "I fear the picture you give of the faction in your fleet is too well drawn. Time and moderation will by degrees get the better ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... had been. The lowest estimate is that one hundred and fifty thousand men perished before Acre during this siege, and some historians calculate the loss at five hundred thousand. The number of deaths was greatly increased by the plague, which prevailed at one time among the troops, and committed fearful ravages. One thing, however, must be said, in justice to the reckless and violent men who commanded these bands, and that is, that they did not send their poor, helpless ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... drifts doomed, a plague-struck one. Shoreward in yawls the sailors fly. But the gauntlet now is nearly run, The spleenful forts by fits reply, And the burning boat dies ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... week. Still she stood by her post. Often, she said, those who were well and happy when they retired, ere daylight came were in the grave, for they were buried the same hour they died. Night after night she prayed to God in the dark, and at length the fury of the plague was abated. ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... terrible stillness, the air being perfectly motionless, and this appearing the more strange after the frightful tornado through which they had passed. Silence absolute, and a darkness as thick as that of the great plague of Egypt—a darkness that could be felt. And now, making no headway whatever, the vessel rolled heavily in the tossing waves, which boiled round them as it were, as if there were some violent disturbance going on far ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... Gladys Royal might do it to plague Libbie," said Betty slowly. "They don't like any of our crowd, and Libbie is so good at French she turns Ada green with envy. The more I think of it, the surer I am it is Ada. Ruth doesn't dislike any one actively ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... where that plague o' my life, Sister's, gone," sputtered the old lady, fussing about, between dining-room and kitchen. "I sent her out ten minutes ago for the milk. And if you want to get that first train to Scoville you've got ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... Omniscience itself, that they pleased God? Why is no intimation given in the later books of the Old Testament that such supplications were offered to Moses, or Aaron, or Abraham, or Noah? When wrath was gone out from the presence of the Lord, and the plague was begun among the people, Aaron took a censer in his hand, and stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed. If the soul of Aaron was therefore to be regarded as a spirit influential with ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... declaring very plain. For their sakes also puttest Pharaoh to pain By ten diverse plagues, as I shall here declare: By blood, frogs, and lice; by flies, death, blotches, and blain. By hail, by grasshoppers, by darkness, and by care: By a sudden plague all their firstgotten ware Thou slewest in one night for his fierce cruelness. From that thy people withhold not ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... world would get on tolerably well, if there were no women in it. They plague the life out of one. You've made me forget, amongst you—poor old Job Haughton that I ought to have gone to see an ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Charles Sackville Lord Buckhurst to whom, as Earl of Dorset, the "Discourse of Satire" is inscribed. They go down the river to hear the guns at sea, and judge by the sound whether the Dutch fleet be advancing or retreating. On the way they talk of the plague of Odes that will follow an English victory; their talk of verse proceeds to plays, with particular attention to a question that had been specially argued before the public between Dryden and his brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard. The question touched the use of blank verse ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... tippling in taverns, alehouses, coffeehouses, and cellars, be severely looked unto as the common sin of the time, and greatest occasion of dispersing the plague. And that no company or person be suffered to remain or come into any tavern, alehouse, or coffeehouse, to drink, after nine of the clock in the evening, according to the ancient law and custom of this city, upon the penalties ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... mentioned the most formidable reason for the American plague," he continued, ignoring her question. "It has to do with that ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... and my folly, and wickedness, and abominations. Because he has been fool enough to plague himself with a wife—he who of all men ought to have kept himself free from such troubles. Oh, he has been so good! It is almost impossible to make any one understand it. If you could know how he has longed ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... should relate a circumstance bordering a little on the supernatural line, that happened to me, as connected with the business of the bairns of which I have just been speaking; and, were it for no other reason, but just to plague the scoffer that sits in his elbow-chair, I have determined to jot down the whole miraculous paraphernally in black and white. With folk that will not listen to the voice of reason, it is needless to be wasterful of words; so them that like, may ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... Abraham Lincoln was to be the next president of the United States, he was at once beset by two pests: the office-seekers, and the men who either warned him to fear assassination or anonymously threatened him with it. Of the two, the office-seekers annoyed him by far the more; they came like the plague of locusts, and devoured his time and his patience. His contempt and disgust towards them were unutterable; he said that the one purpose in life with at least one half of the nation seemed to be that they should live comfortably at the expense of the other ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... discontented nature, for when Mr. Geoffrey Langford came to help him to bed, he said, as he watched the various arrangements his uncle was for the last time sedulously making for his comfort, "Uncle Geoffrey, I ought to thank you very much; I am afraid I have been a great plague to you." ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and given to Prince Fire-fade. The Sea-king also gave him two jewels. One was called the tide-flowing jewel, and the other was called the tide-ebbing jewel. And he said then to the Prince: "Go home now to your own land, and take back the fish-hook to your brother. In this way you shall plague him. If he plant rice-fields in the upland, make you your rice-fields in the valley; and if he make rice-fields in the valley, do you make your rice-fields in the upland. I will rule the water so that it may do good to you, but harm to him. If Prince Fire-flash should ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... man's real feelings about the heavens, when he finds himself alone in the heavens, surrounded by the heavens. You know the truth, and the truth is this. The heavens are evil, the sky is evil, the stars are evil. This mere space, this mere quantity, terrifies a man more than tigers or the terrible plague. You know that since our science has spoken, the bottom has fallen out of the Universe. Now, heaven is the hopeless thing, more hopeless than any hell. Now, if there be any comfort for all your miserable progeny of morbid apes, it must be in the earth, underneath you, under the roots ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... courted my affection by showing her own importance, and telling me that many a substantial farmer in the neighbourhood would be glad to marry her, but she was resolved to please her eye, if she should plague her heart. Then she would launch out into the praise of my proper person, and say, she was sure I would make a good husband, for I was very good-natured. I began to be uneasy at the importunities of these inamoratas, whom, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... on wasps which says they are our chief protectors against flies. In Cumberland the wet cold spring is so bad for the wasps that I partly think this may be so, and the terrible plague of flies in August might perhaps be checked by our teaching our little Agneses to keep wasps' nests instead ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... do declare and promise that I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now established without a king or a house of lords." Soon after the Restoration there came further troubles from plague and fire. Twelve deaths from the plague are recorded in the Burial Register for 1665, and the buildings were again for a time deserted. The great fire of 1666, the flames of which, after destroying King's Bench Walk, licked the east end of the Temple Church, was followed in 1678 by another fire ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... that chill, from suns that smite, From every plague that harms; In camp and march, in siege and fight, Protect ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... else of a useless kind, has closely conjoined with me, whether by accident or by the tie of law (sive casu, sive lege, conglutinavit), they are the persons, though in no other respect commendable, who sit daily in my company, weary me, nay, by heaven, all but plague me to death whenever they are jointly in the humour for it, whereas those whom habits, disposition, studies, had so handsomely made my friends, are now almost all denied me, either by death or by most unjust ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... expense, and a decent suit of clothes provided for him at the cost of eight ducats[413]. Besides these there was a bookbinder, also called John. In the following year two keepers only are mentioned, Demetrius and Josias. The latter died of the plague in 1478. The salary of the librarian was at the rate of ten ducats a month, and that of each of his subordinates at the rate of one ducat for the same period. This arrangement appears to have been confirmed by a Bull of Sixtus IV. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... upon thy land, which thou hast given to thy people for an inheritance. If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, if there be blasting or mildew, locust or caterpiller; if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be; what prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... state of the cities of Europe, smallpox was one of the various plagues from which the inhabitants were never free for any length of time.[3] Leprosy, influenza, smallpox, cholera, typhus fever and bubonic plague constituted the dreadful group. In most countries, including England, smallpox was practically endemic; an attack of it was accepted as a thing inevitable, in children even more inevitable than whooping-cough, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... courts of Akbhar and Aurengzebe,—palaces of the Mogul and the Kathayan Khan,—pigmies, monkey-gods, mummies, Fakeers, dancing-girls, tattooed warriors, Thugs, cannibals, Fetishes, human sacrifices, and the Evil Eye,—Chinese politeness, Bedouin honor, Bechuana simplicity,—the plague, the amok, the bearding of lions, the graves of hero-travellers, flowers in the desert, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... They compass a man's heels. He cannot trample them down. The fashion of the evils that compass us determines the form of the fight we wage with them. Preparations that might amply suffice the city in the day when an army with banners comes against it are no good at all if a plague has to be fought. So there is a way we have to take with 'the iniquity at our heels.' It calls for much patience and much prayer. If we cannot prevent sin from following us, we can at least prevent ourselves from turning and following it. A man can always choose his path if he cannot at every ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... say to this copy of Joannes de Ketam, Venice, 1522? Look at these woodcuts,—the first anatomical pictures ever printed, Doctor, unless these others of Jacobus Berengarius are older! See this scene of the plague-patient, the doctor smelling at his pouncet-box, the old nurse standing square at the bedside, the young nurse with the bowl, holding back and turning her head away, and the old burial-hag behind her, shoving her ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and the great use and benefit it is of to mankind, you will say it is invaluable, and that he who possesses it is master of a great treasure. It cures all sick persons of the most mortal diseases, whether fever, pleurisy, plague, or other malignant distempers; for even if the patient is dying, it will recover him immediately, and restore him to perfect health: and this merely by the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... surprised innumerable cranks and revolutionists by finding quite rational arguments for them, he surprised them unpleasantly also by discovering something else. He discovered a turn of argument or trick of thought which has ever since been the plague of their lives, and given him in all assemblies of their kind, in the Fabian Society or in the whole Socialist movement, a fantastic but most formidable domination. This method may be approximately defined as that of revolutionising the revolutionists by turning their rationalism against their ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... speak to the old woman ... and Adam Lambert avoids me as he would the plague.... I see as little of them as I can.... I had to be prudent ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... degree, as they did once in the house where I am now writing, they become noisome pests, flying into the candles, and dashing into people's faces; but may be blasted and destroyed by gunpowder discharged into their crevices and crannies. In families at such times they are like Pharaoh's plague of frogs—"in their bedchambers, and upon their beds, and in their ovens, and in their kneading troughs." Their shrilling noise is occasioned by a brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch hearth-crickets, and, playing with them as they do with mice, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sons? It is the place of secret ways. Only the very innocent of men-things dwell there; those not soiled by the wisdom of evil. To the wise of the world, it is the place of plague and pestilence and fear; and swift death by heat—and the shedding of blood. Past all else—to such—it is the place of the shedding ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... distress his bottle companions had all forsaken him; they could not bear the thought of death. Had I my days to begin again, said he, I would flee from a swearer or a drunkard, as I would from the plague. He prayed fervently that God would forgive his iniquity for the sake of his Son Jesus Christ. His fever increased, and in a few days he went the way ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... flourishing settlements in Silesia; they had taught the negroes in the West Indies to be sober, industrious and law-abiding; they had tried to uplift the poor Hottentots in South Africa; they had begun a mission in Ceylon, had toiled in plague-stricken Algiers, and had built settlements for the Eskimos in Greenland. If these statements had been made by Moravians, the Committee might have doubted their truth, but in every instance the evidence came, not from Brethren themselves, but from governors, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... acting still, for you believe that prayer is heard and answered. To believe that prayer is heard is to believe in Telepathy—in the direct influence of mind on mind. To believe that prayer is answered is to believe that unembodied spirit does actually modify (even if not storm-cloud or plague-germ) at least the minds, and therefore the brains, of living men. From that belief the most advanced ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... scornfully. "If you go over to the mill you'll probably find Abel Revercomb sulking and brow-beating his mother because I smiled at you this afternoon. And I did it only to plague him!" ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... attempted to make good their situation at Brunswick, in the Jersies. He has recalled the greater part of those troops that had been sent to Rhode Island. At New York they were in the greatest distress for all kinds of fresh provisions and vegetables; at the same time, a fever, similar to the plague, prevailed there, that in all probability before the Spring will carry off to the Elysian shades, at least one half of the troops that remain there, and prepare an immediate grave for the Germans, and all the other troops that are about to be sent ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... rotting there. There are few grave diggers. The peasants have fled from their villages, and the soldiers have other work to do; so that the frontier fields on each side are littered with corruption, where plague and fever find ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... the sun, And puzzles on, through every weather, What time he'll rise,—how long he'll run,— And when he'll leave us altogether; Now matters it a pebble-stone, Whether he shines at six or seven? If they don't leave the sun alone, At last they'll plague him out of heaven! Never sigh when you can sing But laugh, like ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... of their chief Branches, who lost their Vertue by frequenting the fatal Entertainments of the Theatre; notwithstanding the wise and sober part of the Kingdom earnestly sollicit them to spare the People, to stop the spreading Plague and slay the destroying Pen, they persevere with intrepid Resolution and inexorable Cruelty, to poison the Minds, and ruin ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... your very sick patient. I found the disease truly alarming, far beyond the reach of human aid, much deeper than bilious fever, although it might have assumed a typhoid grade. The blister that you were immediately to apply on the back of the patient could not extract that dark, deep plague-spot of slavery, too ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... the knowledge of the Mohammedan ordinances and the miraculous versets of the Koran; and she had professed Judaism in the Holy City of Jerusalem[FN409] for two years' space, that she might master the magic of men and demons; so that she was a plague of plagues and a pest of pests, wrong headed as to belief and to no religion fief. Now the chief reason of her sojourn with her son, King Hardub of Greece, was on account of the slave virgins at his court: for she was given to tribadism[FN410] and could not exist without ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... ground out the expected result; but the plague of humanity was that it would not endure the grinding process with the same stolid, inert helplessness of other raw material. Though he had had his way in each instance, he grew more and more dissatisfied and out of sorts. This vituperation of himself would ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... she thought it nice on such a day. She continued to look at the presents on the chest of drawers, affectedly lowering her eyelids and pretending not to understand her father's naughty words. But the zinc-worker was an awful plague on the nights when he had had too much. Poking his face right against her ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... COMMON PRAYER. Forms of Prayer, an extensive collection of, issued by authority, on public occasions; such as War and Peace, Plague and Pestilence, Earthquakes, Treason and Rebellion, Accession of Kings, Birth of Princes, &c. &c., from A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1847, consisting of 45 in manuscript and 181 printed, together 226; many of which are of the greatest scarcity, with a detailed catalogue of the collection, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... which had come from their breeding-places in the far south-west. During a single night, 'crops, gardens, and every green herb in the settlement had perished, with the exception of a few ears of barley gleaned in the women's aprons.' In the following year the plague reappeared; the insects came again, covering the ground so thickly that they 'might be shovelled with a spade.' The stock of seed-grain was now almost exhausted, and the colonists resolved to send an expedition to the Mississippi for a fresh supply. Two hundred ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... people are more disposed to regard the extensive destruction of their crops in the light of an extraordinary visitation of Heaven, with which it is vain for human efforts to contend, than to employ counteracting or remedial applications. "Sure the Almighty sent the potato-plague, and we must bear it as well as we can!" is the remark of many; while, in other places, the copious sprinklings of holy water on the potato gardens, and on the produce, as it lies upon the surface, are more depended on for disinfecting ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... hasten to thee; Every month of every year will seek thee; Every week of every month will seek thee." So the maiden listened to her brothers, With the ban she crossed the distant waters: But, behold! O melancholy marvel! God sent down the plague, and all the brothers. All the nine, were swept away, and lonely Stood their miserable ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... before the men, so that on their arrival they could set to and pitch their tents on the piece of land allotted to them, and which is said to be composed of equal parts of sand and lice! I feel that I have scored in having one night's relief from this plague—but we are in the land of plagues, ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... when the Dictates of Honour are contrary to those of Religion and Equity, they are the greatest Depravations of human Nature, by giving wrong Ambitions and false Ideas of what is good and laudable; and should therefore be exploded by all Governments, and driven out as the Bane and Plague of Human Society. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... that such things are the decrees of a just and loving God who created this world? Slavery, Polygamy, Famine, and Plague were once universal scourges and accepted as the mysterious ways of God. We have outgrown them all and created a new and nobler God. We find that these things are not the results of his law, but the results of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the war with which her enemies threatened her, rather than descend from her pride of place. And though the awful visitation of the Plague came upon her, and swept away more of her citizens than the Dorian spear laid low, she held her own gallantly against her foes. If the Peloponnesian armies in irresistible strength wasted every spring her corn lands, her vineyards, and her olive groves ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... the Inferno. The moment these caged wretches caught a glimpse of us they rushed to the door, and on bended knees, or with hands uplifted, or with pinched cheeks pressed against the bars, raised a clamour of entreaty. We drew back as the rancid plague-current smote our faces, and questioned Mahomet by our looks as to ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Gould's door; there was no response. "Gould!" he cried, "Gould! are you in?" As there was still no answer he turned the handle and looked in; there was the canary hanging in the window, through which the sun poured, and his shrill notes went through his head; but no Gould. "Plague take it!" muttered Saurin; "it is all to do now another time, and I cannot get this suspense over. I wonder where the fellow has ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... sandflies; results in skin lesions that may become chronic; endemic in 88 countries; 90% of cases occur in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Peru; wild and domesticated animals as well as humans can act as reservoirs of infection. Plague - bacterial disease transmitted by fleas normally associated with rats; person-to-person airborne transmission also possible; recent plague epidemics occurred in areas of Asia, Africa, and South America associated with rural areas or small towns and villages; manifests as fever, headache, and painfully ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... than the black ticket could possibly befall them, they had every inducement to run away from their own homes and villages. At the approach of the commissary of the government, they fled into the woods and marshes, as if they had been pursued by the plague. This was a signal for a civil war on a small scale. Those who were left behind, and whose chance of being drawn was thus increased, hastened to pursue the fugitives with such weapons as came to their hands. In the Limousin ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... duty higher than that owed to the schwarzer Adler, the black eagle of Prussia. Then came an account of the French horse before Rossbach; how they rode out from Weimar, the troopers, before they went, ripping open the beds on which they had slept and scattering the feathers to the wind to plague the housewives,—a piece of ruthlessness that came home thoroughly to the young housekeepers; then how der alte Fritz, lying in wait behind Janus Hill, with General Seydlitz and Field-marshal Keith, suddenly rushed out and put them all to rout. The soldier was in a fever of patriotism and rage ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... with reference to the true nature of their state, they both were sinners, and both by the law under condemnation. True, the Publican's leprosy was outward; but the Pharisee's leprosy was inward: his heart, his soul, his spirit, was as foul, and had as much the plague of sin, as had the other ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... from the novelty, extent, and variety of the whole scene. Yet, calmly and peacefully as it now slumbers in the genial sunshine of a summer's afternoon, what visions it conjures up of bloodshed and rapine, plague, pestilence, and famine, and of all the calamities wrought by human hands, and all the appalling visitations of a divine power by which this ill-fated spot has been afflicted. Looking back through the wide waste of years, the mighty ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... More is made to remark that modern Englishmen have no guarantee whatever, in these latter times, that their shores shall not be visited, as of old, by devastating plagues. "As touching the pestilence," says Sir Thomas (or rather the poet in his name), "you fancy yourselves secure because the plague has not appeared among you for the last hundred and fifty years—a portion of time which, long as it may seem, compared with the brief term of mortal existence, is as nothing in the physical history of the globe. The importation ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... voice to Fontanares) You contemptible seducer! (Aloud) Here I give you ten thousand sequins. (In a low voice) Atrocious wretch! (Aloud) My daughter's income for one year. (In a low voice) May the plague choke you! (Aloud) Upon the presentation of this check, Senor Avaloros will count out ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... King of Spain, was eight years older than her husband, whom she married in the first year of his reign. She had been previously married to his brother Arthur, who died of the plague in 1502. For several years after her marriage with Henry VIII., her domestic happiness was a subject of remark; and the emperor, Charles V., congratulated her on her brilliant fortune. She was beautiful, sincere, accomplished; religious, and disinterested, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Hence sickness was not encouraged. If the sailor-patient did not recover within a reasonable time, he was "put on shore sick," sometimes to the great terror of the populace, who, were he supposed to be afflicted with an infectious disease, fled from him "as if he had the plague." [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 2732—Capt. Young, 24 June 1740.] On shore he was treated for thirty days at his country's charges. If incurable, or permanently disabled, he was then turned adrift and left to shift for himself. A clean ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson |
